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A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

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Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#51
post #44

What is the legal basis for releasing the someone's private files and communications? If they can do it to Epstein, they can do it to you, to the Washington Post journalist, to former President Clinton, etc. Is the scope at least limited somehow? Generally I favor transparency, but of course probably the most important parts are withheld.

It was passed into law by congress and signed by the president:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein_Files_Transparency_Act

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#52

> Information leakage may also be occurring via PDF comments or orphaned objects inside compressed object streams, as I discovered above. hopefully someone is independently archiving all documents my understanding is that some are being removed

Reddit is also removing and shadowbannig such posts, but there's a community on https://lemmy.world/post/42440468

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#53
post #44

What is the legal basis for releasing the someone's private files and communications? If they can do it to Epstein, they can do it to you, to the Washington Post journalist, to former President Clinton, etc. Is the scope at least limited somehow? Generally I favor transparency, but of course probably the most important parts are withheld.

I believe a literal Act of Congress…

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#54
post #44

What is the legal basis for releasing the someone's private files and communications? If they can do it to Epstein, they can do it to you, to the Washington Post journalist, to former President Clinton, etc. Is the scope at least limited somehow? Generally I favor transparency, but of course probably the most important parts are withheld.

> What is the legal basis for releasing the someone's private files and communications?

An act of congress, for one.

Also, AFAIK, federal privacy generally ends at death, as does criminal liability; so releasing government files from a federal investigation after death of the subject is generally within the realm of acceptable conduct.

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#55
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He met with moot ("he is sensitive, be gentile", search on jmail), and within a few days the /pol/ board got created, starting a culture war in the US, leading to Trump getting elected president. Absolutely nuts.

I always wondered how much of a cultural etc influence 4Chan actually had (has?) - so much of the mindset and vernacular that was popular there 10+ years ago is now completely mainstream.

Ah, a rare opportunity to share a blog post that had a big effect on my political outlook back in 2016, Meme Magic Is Real, You Guys

Who can say what effect it had on the world, but a presidential candidate reposting himself personified as Pepe the frog was still weird back then, and at least a nod to the trolls doing so much work on his behalf

https://medium.com/tryangle-magazine/meme-magic-is-real-you-... (dismissable login wall)

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#58

Has anyone analysed JE's writing style and looked for matches in archived 4chan posts or content from similar platforms? Same with Ghislaine, there should be enough data to identify them atp right? I don't buy the MaxwellHill claims for various reasons but it doesn't mean there's nothing to find.

People always claimed this as a data leak vector but I've always been sceptical. Like just writing style and vocabulary is probably extremely shared among too many people to narrow it down much. (How people that you know could have written this reply?) The counter argument is that he had a very specific style in his mail so maybe this is a special case.

Re: A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs

#60
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Epstein tried to meet with moot at least once: https://www.jmail.world/search?q=chris+poole

He met with moot ("he is sensitive, be gentile", search on jmail), and within a few days the /pol/ board got created, starting a culture war in the US, leading to Trump getting elected president. Absolutely nuts.

Given the "nature" of 4chan (only a few hundred posts and a few thousand comments at a time, the vast majority of it shitposts and spam), it just can't do that. The imageboard format and limits basically prevent any scaling and mainstream success. If you follow any of the general threads in pol or sp for a while, you'll spot the same few people all the time, it's a tiny community of active users.
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